i am so friggen pissed (rant)

[xtrememtbiker85]

A few weeks ago i needed to get rear brakes and a radiator done on my xj. It was about 30* and snowing when I realized my coolant leak. I brought my xj to my usual mechanic for the work/ I usually do my own work but its just too cold and I do not have a garage to work in.

It turns out that i needed new drums, shoes, and break cylinders(exspected this), new radiator(knew this) thermostat gasket and t stat and the upper radiator hose. I also had one wheel hub assembly replaced under warranty from sanel parts b/c it wore out in two months. The total damage was about $800. I paid for it and was happy that my jeep was fixed.

Today about three weeks later after installing my new CB radio and antenna I got for x mas i went to the mall to drop off some film for developing. I got home and ate dinner.

Then I left to go pick up my girl friend to go seel the movie "Fun With Dick and Jane." I started my xj and changed cd's. I backed up and noticed a huge spill of water on the drive way. I am like WTF is that, I parked and got out to find my radiator gushing coolant. I check the engine to find out that the lower radiator hose on the drivers side blew off the radiator. The clamp was barely tight. Now its 8:30 and too late to rant to the mechanic, who is closed until monday.

I wound up taking my moms 01 Impala to get my g/f and go find some coolant. But by the time I got to the store, they closed. So I was stuck with the mommy car for the evening.

To end my rant the movie was hilarious and tomorrow morning I will get the coolant and tighten the clamp properly and recheck all their work. It would have sucked if that happened while i was out driving or 30mins away from home getting my CB antenna for my new radio.

Now i remember why i do my own work usually, so i know its done right the first time. That and i will be going to the mechanic on monday and asking him to reimburse me for the coolant i need to buy. It only seems fair for them to pay for their F up.

:repair: :flamemad:
Rant done!

[caz]

I understand your frustration man... Reasons just like that are exactly why I RARELY take my vehicles anywhere to get serviced. I'm buying my xj here tomorrow and will take the plunge into learning it really quickly. The only person I can trust working on my cars is me... Good luck man

[OT]

i will be going to the mechanic on monday and asking him to reimburse me for the coolant i need to buy. It only seems fair for them to pay for their F up.
So, after that, you'll be moving on to another mechanic?

[xtrememtbiker85]

Yeah his name is me. Like I said I only go to the mechanic when its too cold, snowing, raining or no time. Not to say I wont go to this guy anymore but I do think they should be more careful cause it could have turned out much worse than that.

[Sniggs]

I took mine to a mechanic once... see I had the Farts really bad one day and couldn't stand the smell working under there. Funny, they charged me extra for fumigating the interior too! What's up with that? :passgas: OH! Pardon me!

:D

[ladywolf]

LOL ok sniggs, i'm gonna need hip waders here shortly.

i try to do most of my own work, but theres a lot i dont know a whole lot about. if its on my cj, i try to weasel my brother into doing it (especially since i'm in iraq at the moment) and most of the stuff on my subaru is covered by the warrantee, so i'm not worried too much (yet)

[AJPulley]

Yeah his name is me. Like I said I only go to the mechanic when its too cold, snowing, raining or no time. Not to say I wont go to this guy anymore but I do think they should be more careful cause it could have turned out much worse than that.
Hey, your mechanic and mine have the same name!

[5-90]

'S funny - I have NEVER sent one of my vehicles out for work, unless equipment (like a tyre changing machine) or the law (like Smog Check) required it.

I blame my grandfather for this - he always taught me that one could fix anything one had the smarts to understand, and the tools to take to bits properly. That man has since saved me thousands (in repair bills on practically everything.)

I gotta get a tyre changer and a balancer - it would make my life simpler.

I spend a lot of time teaching the same things to anyone who is willing to listen - I've got a neighbour who's just turned 18, and every time he talks about taking his truck in to do something, I tell him what he needs and to bring it over sometime so I can show him how to fix it himself. At least he's learning.

I've got nothing against mechanics - some of them are quite good. Just not out here. There are three mechanics in this country I'm willing to trust - two are retired, and I'm the only one in California. Of course, I therefore plan to open a shop in the Flagstaff area in a few years, specialising in Jeep repairs and AMC I6 performance/machine work.

As nearly all of you who have sent me PMs knows, though, I'm always willing to teach someone else to handle anything they can - just because you can find a mechanic doesn't mean you should take him everything that's broken - save your bucks wherever possible.

Besides, if I do something wrong, I know where to find me, I can always get a hold of me, and I rarely manage to do anything wrong anyhow. After all, I'm a picky bastard - and I see no reason to change. Come to think of it, I can probably count on the fingers of one nose the number of times I've made a mechanical mistake in the last ten years - anything before that is something I'd have to dig through (but the odds there are fairly slim anyhow.)

5-90

[XTrmXJ]

I cant believe I accually read all that about a ficken hose clamp that you could have just tightend up after seeing it loose

[funvtec]

'S

I spend a lot of time teaching the same things to anyone who is willing to listen - I've got a neighbour who's just turned 18, and every time he talks about taking his truck in to do something, I tell him what he needs and to bring it over sometime so I can show him how to fix it himself. At least he's learning.


5-90


good for you i'm glad to hear this, see my dad died when i was 13 and we always used to wrench on his Camaro's and Nova's (drag racer) and thats how i learned alot about cars but i still wish i had more time to learn more. Believe me your neighbor will look back and realize how lucky he is. I wish i lived next to you

[xtrememtbiker85]

Well at least there are people out there willing to pass on the knowlege of self repair and how to do it.

XTrmXJ

As far as reading all this just to find out that a hose clamp was loose, reread the titile it is listed as a rant and rants usually are about something stupid. My point was that it could have happened when i was away from home and that it was a careless mistake on the mechanics behaf.

[ROBZ95Xj]

Theres only one mechanic that I trust with my Jeep, he's only 4 miles down the road and he's been working on Jeeps all his life. Unfortunatly he dosnt do state inspections so last summer i had to go to another place, they replaced my header and did some e brake work, well i had bolts on my intake missing my e brake dosnt work and a few days after me getting my Jeep out of there shop I had some funky noises coming from my rear axle wich turned out to be that the cross pin decided to come loose. Well the lesson that I learned is either do it your self or bring it to someone you trust.

[Gil BullyKatz]

I've only trusted one mechanic in my entire life...

My Dad...

Starting working on cars at 14 (he's 66 and retired now)...

A master at exotics... Back in the day when sinc'ing 6 carbs on a jag and a tune up was $1500... He used to work at this place that dealt with Ferraris, Rolls Royce, Porsche, etc... (ever seen a Rolls Royce hearse or a BMW Isetta?)

He's one of those old school mechanics that can tell you what's wrong by the sound of your engine.


I loved being 14 and working there after school scrubbing parts clean at the safety Kleen sink and occasionally starting the cars up and revving the engines for diagnostics...

Every time I fix something myself, I think of him and thank him for exposing and encouraging me to getting dirty and not minding the scraped knuckles. I also learned how to properly swear at a stripped bolt!

I really miss the days when you could actually fix your car without a computer...

I wrench on my jeep but I take the wife's Jetta to a specialist. ( I usually pay him to do the diagnosis and then I fix it myself)

The upside to the internet is amount of info, write-ups and tech available for all makes and models...

It's separating the fact from spobi that's the issue.

[old_man]

I've help teach every kid on the block to wrench. I started with their bikes and worked up to their first cars, most of which were XJ's. A couple of them then taught their dads how to do a tuneup. :laugh3:

I have three daughters. The oldest is a fairly good mechanic. She was 8 months pregnant and in living in California. Her radiator puked and she took it to a mechanic who quoted here something like $800. She told him to go to hell. She went to the internet ordered a radiator overnight, hit a local Harbor Freight, got a few tools and ended up swapping it herself for around $250. She married a guy who, while mechanically inclined, was raised by a father who couldn't screw in a light bulb. Slowly but surely he is learning.

I say all this to get to the point, that if we don't pass on the skills, the next generation will be at the total mercy of mechanics who only know how to shotgun problems and run up huge repair bills. Heck, most schools around here don't even have metal or auto shop classes anymore, but by God they have swimming pools.

By the way, I was working under my jeep in my garage one day and heard a crowd of teenagers walk by and talk about vandalizing my jeep. One of them was a neighbor kid. He jumped in the middle of the rest of them and said to lay off or they would have to deal with him and that not all adults were asshats. The problem with kids these days is that nobody wants to invest any time or effort in teaching them, much less giving them any respect.

:rant off:

[ROBZ95Xj]

Heck, most schools around here don't even have metal or auto shop classes anymore, .



those were the only 2 classes I was good in and enjoyed

[OT]

I never had metal shop, but I had wood shop.
I guess designing and building CO2 cars got me hooked on making four wheeled vehicles a main staple.

[Starscream]

Heck, most schools around here don't even have metal or auto shop classes anymore, but by God they have swimming pools.

Wow... this may sound dumb, but I've never really heard much mention of a school with a swimming pool. That'd be nice. Our high school has an entire compound, the Applied Technology Center, devoted to trades. You can take courses as electives. It ranges from welding, auto body and auto tech, to animation, drafting and cosmotology. I loved it. I took auto tech and auto body. I helped restore a classic Mustang. I was one of the few (me, two other guys and the teacher) who even got to get near it. :D A bunch of guys that were into imports did their work there for only the cost of parts used or brought in. We had a couple guys running around with chameleon/flaked paint jobs that were done for about $800. That sure beats $4K.

[OT]

Wow... this may sound dumb, but I've never really heard much mention of a school with a swimming pool. That'd be nice. Our high school has an entire compound, the Applied Technology Center, devoted to trades. You can take courses as electives. It ranges from welding, auto body and auto tech, to animation, drafting and cosmotology. I loved it. I took auto tech and auto body. I helped restore a classic Mustang. I was one of the few (me, two other guys and the teacher) who even got to get near it. :D A bunch of guys that were into imports did their work there for only the cost of parts used or brought in. We had a couple guys running around with chameleon/flaked paint jobs that were done for about $800. That sure beats $4K.
Check in class 6A high schools.
Ours even had raquetball courts (I mean wallyball courts :D).

[Starscream]

Ours even had raquetball courts (I mean wallyball courts :D).
Har har, very funny :laugh3: I know what raquetball is. I don't even think there is a 6A school in SC.

[8Mud]

To add to what Old_Man had to say. When growing up in South Cal. in the 60`s the vast majority of youngsters were doing drugs and acting stupid. I never was one to follow the trend or hang with the crowd. I was kind of adopted by a group of flat track racers, that kept me busy and out of trouble. Whatever cash I had, I stuck into parts and spent most of my free time wrenching on something. A whole lot of my high school friends, went down the old chit chute, doing drugs and in the party scene. Some didn't survive the pace.
While the rest of the guys were buying dope, I built a wrecked 64 Chevy van (motor between the front seats), into a stop light to stop light screamer. The van was an odd choice, but I was always prone to do something different. And had a really nice 56 GMC 4X panel truck.
One thing I always wished, was that I was a good teacher, but just don't have the knack. But I sure enough encourage my kids and there friends, to build and create instead of spending there time with cheap thrills.

[JohnJohn]

How was the movie? :laugh3:

[xtrememtbiker85]

Friggen awesome!! But I am a long time Jim Carey fan, since the Ace Ventura days and DUmb and Dumber.


Thanks for all the replies and good feed back guys. Its really good to see that I am not alone in the world of computer haters and do it your self mechanics. I Hope I never have to buy something that is so complicated to work on that it needs to go to an authorized mechanic to be repaired until I have kids.